Selective Excitation of One-, Two-, and Three-Nucleon Configurations in Transfer Reactions Induced by Heavy Ions

A study is reported of one-, two-, and three-nucleon transfer reactions induced by 114-MeV ${}_{}{}^{12}{}_{}{}^{}\mathrm{C}$ ions on targets of ${}_{}{}^{12}{}_{}{}^{}\mathrm{C}$, ${}_{}{}^{16}{}_{}{}^{}\mathrm{O}$, and ${}_{}{}^{40}{}_{}{}^{}\mathrm{Ca}$. A prominent feature is the extreme selectivity of the reaction mechanism in exciting simple one-, two-, and three-particle stretched configurations in the residual nuclei.